Review: Dungeon Master's Guide 2024

Dungeon Master’s Guide by Wizards of the Coast

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Marketing is often lies or half-truths dressed up to try and trick our stupid animal brains - pushing past our rationality. I’m happy to report that in this case, the marketing was, in my humble opinion, not a lie. We were told that this was a new, useful Dungeon Master’s Guide - more useful than the 2014 guide. I found this to be true. I don’t think I’ve re-opened the 2014 DMG since first reading it. It was really structured as a reference book or manual. The 2024 DMG is full of very useful information.<

In a lot of ways the 2024 DMG is a great entry point into the concept of being the Dungeon Master. I think it even is a bot extra simplistic in the first chapter so that if you and your friends were all new to D&D, one of you could pick up DMing. If you’ve been playing for a while and are new to the position of DM, you could probably skim the first chapter. Beyond that it would be introducing you to many concepts that you were probably taking for granted if your sessions were going smoothly.

The other huge difference is that the 2014 DMG seemed tailored towards DMs who wanted to run their own custom campaigns rather than published D&D campaigns. This DMG is much more focused on teaching the concepts. It might actually be a bit TOO shallow on creating your own worlds. Perhaps that’s better left to another book or to 3rd party publishers.

Since this was an anniversary year, there’s a huge chapter on the Greyhawk setting, introducing it to new players. It also gives a few points to jump into a campaign there. I also appreciated the index that introduces the reader to famous D&D characters and D&D lore.

If you buy digital version you also gain access to a bunch of magic items you can use in your games. (This will be tied to whatever platform you buy the digital version on)

Overall, I think this DMG is a HUGE improvement over the previous one. If you’re thinking about being a D&D DM, I think this is a very good purchase. The first few chapters made me consider a few concepts I hadn’t thought of and it has made things go more smoothly at my table.

• DnD